Charles Stross und das Leid des Erfolgreichen

Charles Stross gehört zu den "Rising Stars" der internationalen SF und ist auch in Deutschland zunehmend bekannt - sein neuer Roman "Accelerando" erscheint demnächst. Charles gehört auch zu der Riege der anglo-amerikanischen SF-Autor/innen, die sich regelmäßig im Usenet tummeln (zusammen mit anderen wie Ryk Spoor - hier weitgehend unbekannt -, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Sterling, Bujold, Wrede usw.). Jüngst hat er einige interessante News gepostet, die ich den hiesigen Autoren nicht vorenthalten möchte (man sollte der englischen Sprache mächtig sein), die wohl in der Regel sowas antiquarisches wie das Usenet nicht benutzen, da Foren ja viel kewler sind. Die Überschrift dieses Blogeintrages sagt dazu - fast - alles, oder, und das ist mein letzter Kommentar: Solche Sorgen möchte ich haben!

So. $SERIES is "go" for another three books, on top of the first three. Book #3 introduced a story arc that was designed for a much longer book (250,000 words, not the 100,000 short-arses they're buying), so it was projected to stretch into book #5 then die, gracelessly. $EDITOR suggested refactoring the plot so that new plot strands start as the old ones get tied off. ($EDITOR may well be gunning for his own personal record in sustaining a series on life support. $AUTHOR is torn between a surplus of ghast, and the awareness that this might be his old-age pension and that it's a bad idea to look such gift-horses in the mouth.)

Anyway. I duly added some extra plot threads. Books #1 and #2 were about 80% told from one character's POV, but in omniscient third, with intrusions from other POVs. Book #3 is about 70% that character and 30% supplied by two other POVs. Book #4 is turning out to be about 40% the central character, and 60% supplied by four other POVs.

And then I realized that the plot trajectory was succumbing to George R. R. Martin syndrome, or maybe Wheel-of-Time-ism. I'm nearly 60% of the way through the book and 20% of the way through the outline. Character viewpoints gobble up stage time like nobody's business, and characterization depth doesn't develop anything like as well when you've only got 20K words per character per book, rather than 80K words.

If you ever get the urge to kill a major character, and soon, just to make the plot easier to juggle, it's a sure sign that you're succumbing to self-extending-series syndrome.

Und noch zur Ergänzung:

Life's too short for megaword monoliths. I tend to believe that the purpose of a novel is to entertain by exploring some aspect of the human condition. By which token, if you can't convey an idea in a million words, it's possibly time to consider using a different medium.

I'm kind of aghast at myself as it is, because I'm somewhere around 360,000 words in on a project that's got to come in around the 600,000 words mark, minimum -- for perspective, think in terms of the first two volumes of the Baroque Cycle -- and which may go on for longer. But unlike Stephenson, I'm not able to write it all as a coherent novel and then go back and polish stuff and ensure everything fits together; it's more like a series of novel-sized chapters. So keeping it under control requires a whole load of hubris in the first place (as it's equivalent to planning on getting it right first time, effectively in first draft), not to mention a bundle of planning. And each time I've finished a book in this series so far, I've been thrown an editorial curve-ball that's forced me to re-plan everything following it ...